Micke

About micke

Over the weekend, I’ve managed to get quite a lot done.
Building is an outlet for me. It is a perfect way to relieve stress and think of other things, so particularly after an intense week with lots of ups and downs, like this one has been, really diving head first in to building is the best way to clear my head!

One of the things I don’t like as much, is painting. I don’t have a proper place to paint, and I’m not very good at spray cans, but still, I make do with what I have.

First off, it was time to spray the motherboard to get rid of that raw metal feel.

As always, a few thin layers is key here…

.. to build up more thin fast drying layers, until it is all covered and the clear coat goes on.

I’ve painted both the inside and outside of my motherboard, I figured it would be the neatest way, really.

Next up, I spent more time attaching things to the shell itself, like this painted v-hook to hang the thrower on. I cut off the bolts with a hand saw and sanded them flush by hand.

Some of the things that are screwed on from the outside, I’ve made it easier to remove, if needed. For the shock mount, I used wing nuts. It is also a good way to stop this from being overly tight and damaging the resin.

In the picture you also clearly see the mouse-hole cut out for the loom holder I made a while back. This holder will be superglued to the motherboard for now. It seems to be holding up very well so far.

I also adjusted the length of the cable, and finally took the decision to cut it off with my hand saw. I screwed in a bolt from the inside to press against the cable tiles and make it even sturdier, but this baby is not going anywhere.

I used the same idea on my copper foot wires on my R2-D2, where I used a rubber hose inside it, and had a screw inside a plug that forced it shut.

Since I started running out of things to do on the basic pack for now, I started dressing the pack. A few cables here…

… and a few cables there…

… and some more over here…

… and don’t forget around the Ion arm …

… and things are starting to look good.

As the more observant of you may have realized, I’ve flipped my ribbon cable. Some screen shot references from Ghostbuster (the Original movie from 1984) revealed that some of these ribbon cables were mounted just like mine was first, but on some packs, it was not orientated in the same way. That’s the beauty of prop building. Finding these little irregularities.

As I’ve modeled mine after the “Spengler” pack, ie the pack that was used by the late Harold Ramis as Egon Spengler in the movie, I twisted mine another half lap to get the rainbow coloured cables facing the outside of the pack. One of these details only a true nerd would ever see.

Here’s finally the pack in all its glory.

.. and here it is with some labels I had laying about attached at random places.

Of course there are still things to do on the pack itself. Normally there is an ugly weld between the Ion arm and the Booster tube, and the Booster tube should be welded on to the pack. Mine is just pressed against it for now. I may or may not fix this, depending on what look I want to go for. It is not a difficult thing to add, it all just depends on if I want to replace the resin parts with metal parts in the future or not.

Another thing that is still on the “to do” list is weathering. Once the entire pack (with thrower) is complete, I will sit down in some sessions and do some proper weathering. It looks too brand new at this point.

Last but not least, electronics. I have still not done anything when it comes to electronics. There is also the nice power panel I made a while back that needs to be mounted, but the base pack is mostly done at this point, and that feels just great!

Next week, I’ll start working on electronics and/or the thrower. Since the thrower has all the controls for the sounds and lights inside, it sort of can’t be done one without the other.

To continue where I left off yesterday, I continued the work on the Booster on my Ghostbusters Proton pack.

I took the raw 3d print, sanded off the biggest irregularities and then covered it heavily in spray filler. Once cured, it was time to sand it off again…

Two rounds of spray filler and sanding off until it was smooth, then time to start painting. The key to paint with spray colours is to build it up in thin layers and let them dry in between.

Once the paint was dry enough (it also dries a LOT faster when you apply it in small layers), it was time to clear coat the booster.

Once dry, it was time to mount on the proton pack. The mounting was done fairly easily and quickly. In reality, I should do a weld line around the booster, but as I am planning to replace this (possibly) with an aluminium tube at some point, I have opted to not do this just yet. We’ll see. If so I have the weld line to build up with epoxy resin, and also to do the “ugly weld” between the booster and the Ion arm.

So far, so good.

One of my pet peeves when it comes to 3d printing is that many people unfortunately do not put in the effort of making their prints smooth. Some people wishes to keep the 3d print lines as a statement, which is fine, but many prop makers don’t use the tool to its full potential: which in my world means to use the 3d printer to save time when building the core item, and the time saved in construction can be put into finishing instead. If used like this, and you use smart methods when doing the finish, you will save time overall and still have a prop that looks great!

Last piece to do on the outside of the pack: paint the motherboard, do the ugly weld and (possibly) the weld around the booster tube, then time for the dressing of the pack, adding labels, routing all the little cables and stuff that makes it look great.

There is still a LOT to be done on the inside of the pack, not to mention the thrower that I’ve barely started with. My plan for the thrower is to 3d print mounting panels to be placed on the inside of the thrower to hold the electronics in place.

One of the few items I have left on my pack is the booster tube.
I sourced a few nearby stores for fitting tubes in PVC, but found none that were even near the proper diameter, so I decided to make my own. Let’s get that 3D printer to work!

Now, the print went over night and when I started it last night, I was tired and used the wrong settings, so it is all spotty and blobby, but the new one above is straight off the printer with no sanding using the correct settings!.

Here are all the parts:

The booster plug just fits inside the outermost part of the booster tube, and is fastened from the inside with an m3 bolt.

All parts of the tube are designed to be screwed together to help when gluing them. I use these brass inserts that I just head press into the plastic and i just love them!

They are simply pressed into the plastic with my soldering iron, so they are melted in place.

All three parts fit together, and all holes are already made into the design.

Apart from the annoying spots, this looks pretty ok!

Here is the new booster tube, printing as I write this, and will keep on printing for another 10 hours or so. It looks much better when printed with the correct settings!

Finally a few shots of the pack with all now painted and fastened parts, apart from the booster tube and frame, which are the last parts to be mounted on the pack.